Country music's year-of-women myth

Originally published in fall 2013

It's easy to rattle off a list of women superstars within country music: Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Reba McEntire and Shania Twain immediately come to mind, as well as newer additions like Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood. There's no shortage of talented women on that roster. But if you're looking to find those names on the airwaves, or the names of chart newcomers like Kacey Musgraves and women-fronted acts like Lady Antebellum or the Band Perry, you're looking for the needle in country radio's haystack.

Of the first 48 weeks in 2013, zero solo women held the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Country Airplay chart. Two No. 1 songs during that period featured a woman (Tim McGraw and Swift with "Highway Don't Care" and Blake Shelton with Pistol Annies on "Boys 'Round Here"), for a total of three weeks at No. 1. Women in a group fared a bit better, with a total of five weeks at No. 1 (the Band Perry, Lady Antebellum and Thompson Square). Over on the Country Songs chart, T-Swift managed to be the only woman to hit No. 1 in all 48 weeks. For one week.

Despite this, in June, NPR's On the Record coined 2013 "Country Music's Year of the Woman," citing a handful of reasons, including the success of both Lambert (what NPR's Ann Powers calls "the Lambert Effect") and close-harmony duos and trios with women as members (Sugarland, Lady Antebellum). NPR also listed ABC's hit show Nashville as a factor, a show that boasts two women country superstars as the leads and passes the Bechdel test with flying colours.

The list of pros has grown with the passing months. The 2013 Country Music Association Award nominations were dominated by women this year: Musgraves, Swift and Lambert were at the forefront with six nominations each, two of Lambert's for all-women group Pistol Annies. (In the end, Lambert won for female vocalist of the year, Musgraves for new artist of the year and Swift won two awards for her song with Tim McGraw and Keith Urban, "Highway Don't Care.") Musgraves became the first solo woman in five years to open at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart, making her the seventh woman ever to do that in the last 22 years, which is how long Nielsen SoundScan has been tracking the numbers.

But what's dominating the charts is something Jody Rosen, a writer for New York Magazine's arts and culture site, Vulture, coined "bro-country" earlier this year: "music by and of the tatted, gym-toned, party-hearty young American white dude." He's describing Florida Georgia Line, a male duo that has been atop multiple country charts with "Cruise" — a song about bikini-clad women with long, tanned legs that make the two men want to "Cruise."

The video shows Florida Georgia Line's supposedly ideal woman, who's not so much a person but a stereotypical fantasy. She's a midriff-baring, cut-off shorts-wearing object who spends most of her time towelling herself off seductively. (And after Billboard changed its chart rules to include airplay on pop radio as well as country radio, "Cruise" became the longest-running No. 1 country song of all time earlier this year.)

Lindi Ortega is a Toronto-bred, Nashville-based artist whose music can be considered a lot of things, but definitely not bro-country. And while she's recently earned nominations for both the Junos and the Canadian Country Music Association Awards, plus a spot on the Polaris Music Prize long list, Ortega confirms she can't find a place for her music on mainstream radio — though the aforementioned Nashville has placed her music in its episodes multiple times.

"[Programmers] don't feel that it has an audience for their stations I guess," she says. "And anything that kind of does break the mould seems to be looked at as an anomaly [according to industry people]."

Ortega cites Musgraves as an example of that anomaly: an unconventional country artist whose fourth album and major label debut back in March, Same Trailer, Different Park, has been lauded by critics and debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart.

"Every once in a while I'll go and watch Top 40, CMT or GAC [Great American Country] or what have you, like what's really popular," Ortega continues, "and it's like nine times out of 10 you get a bunch of male videos in a row and then one female, you know?"

Examining the spin history (the number of times a song is played) on multiple radio stations across both Canada and the States results in a similar top 20 ratio of songs added in 2013: nearly all 20 spots boast male artists' names, with Lambert normally showing up once — though she often doesn't even make the top 10. (In the States, Taylor Swift usually also makes an appearance.)

Country station JR FM in Vancouver has a top 20 spin history that starts at numbers 1 and 2 with Florida Georgia Line and Jason Aldean, respectively, and ends with Dean Brody and Small Town Pistols (which has one woman member) at numbers 19 and 20, as of the end of October 2013. Lambert lands at No. 11 as the only solo woman on the list, and at No. 18 as the featured artist on Keith Urban's "We Were Us." 

For JR FM's program and music director, Mark Patric, the spin history of songs added in 2013 comes down to weekly research numbers, and the analysis that women don't test well with the station's audience, roughly 60 per cent of which is made up of women over the age of 40.

While Patric and his colleagues have a few theories, he says, "One thing [female listeners will] struggle with is women that want to scream at you, vocally. Divas. Women don't want to hear that for the most part."

It's a troubling thing, lumping women in with those words. The "diva"-ness of Adele, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga didn't stop them from becoming superstars. And country queen Shania Twain didn't sound shrill when she exclaimed "Man! I Feel Like a Woman."

"It's very country-related," says Patric. "I know that in other genres of music it's different. But for the country listener, this is what I've seen with research."

Spin history is not only influenced by research, but also by what Clay St. Thomas, co-host of JR FM's morning show, calls "the sheep effect": stations are influenced by other stations' rotation lists, and make decisions accordingly.

"Everybody decides that the new Luke Bryan song is awesome and so it becomes a hit because everybody's decided that," he says.

With uncannily similar spin histories across the States and Canada, it's not hard to believe.

I've never looked at it from the standpoint of 'Oh, I don't have enough women in there,' or 'I've got too many women in there.' Hits are hits.​- Dave Kelly, director of strategic research for Big Machine Records

But in addition to "diva" voices and the sheep effect, there's the pre-women's suffrage-sounding rule that you can't play two women back-to-back on the radio. St. Thomas says it's not country radio-specific — a version of this unwritten rule has existed at other stations he's worked with — but it's prevalent enough. 

"When it becomes that black and white, where you can't have two of them next to each other," says St. Thomas, "well then it sounds like you're just being sexist, right?"

"It's not a rule," says Dave Kelly, currently the director of strategic research for Big Machine Records, and former regional program director and head of country programming for now defunct Citadel Broadcasting. "It's a programming philosophy of certain people … there are some programmers that feel that way and most don't, in my experience. In my experience, the best song wins."

Speaking over the phone from Nashville, Kelly says he's never much considered an artist's gender when choosing songs for either testing or programming during his more than 25 years in the business. He plays what tests well for the station.

"I've never looked at it from the standpoint of 'Oh, I don't have enough women in there,' or 'I've got too many women in there.' Hits are hits."

There has been suggestions from programmers and consultants that you should never play two females back-to-back ... and I actually, I do adhere to that rule.​​- Mark Patric, JR FM's program and music director

"There has been suggestions from programmers and consultants that you should never play two females back-to-back," says Patric, of JR FM. "And I actually, I do adhere to that rule."

Patric immediately clarifies, saying he has broken the rule and will again. He generally follows it because he says he has so few women to choose from for the rotation.

When asked if any form of this has existed for male musicians, the answer's unsurprising.

"Well, there's a rule that I have, is to try and to make sure there's a female every 20 minutes … so I do have a rule set that says after a certain amount of guys you need to try and get a female in there."

One female every 20 minutes. That's three times an hour. Welcome to "Country Music's Year of Women."